


Finally Falling With You

by Cats_Dont_Float



Category: Homestuck
Genre: (there's some angst in there too but like two paragraphs), First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Sloppy Makeouts, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23363272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cats_Dont_Float/pseuds/Cats_Dont_Float
Summary: Dave makes a confession, the same confession Karkat has never been brave enough to make, and Karkat reflects back on the pain of his past, and everything that has led up to now.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 2
Kudos: 108





	Finally Falling With You

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] started pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at ??:?? -- 

CG: STRIDER

CG: STRIDER ANSWER ME YOU ASSHOLE

CG: I KNOW YOU’VE BEEN ONLINE

CG: ITS MOVIE NIGHT TONIGHT FUCKER AND YOU HAVENT BOTHERED TO TURN UP

CG: I HAVENT HEARD FROM YOU IN DAYS

CG: LOOK

CG: IF I DID SOMETHING WRONG CAN YOU PLEASE JUST TELL ME

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] started pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] at ??:?? --

TG: fine just give me a second

TG: its not you karkat its just…

TG: fuck

TG: youre my best bro okay? like even more than john and you know how much egbert means to me

TG: but it…

TG: fuck ill just say it alright

TG: i think i like you too much

TG: like a crush

TG: like a fucking full homo head over heels please sweep me off my feet and kiss me right now like one of your stupid romcoms because i cant take it for one more second kinda crush

TG: there thats why ive been ignoring you

TG: sorry

TG: ...

TG: karks

TG: you still there?

CG: YEAH IM STILL HERE

CG: I JUST

CG: FUCCKK

CG: WHERE ARE YOU RIGHT NOW?

TG: common room

CG: ALONE?

TG: uh yeah

TG: why?

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at ??:?? --

TG: karkat?

TG: alright good talk i guess

TG: see ya around man

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] at ??:?? --

Karkat pushes his husktop away from him seconds after closing down the pesterchum window, and jumps up from his pile. His heart’s racing and his legs won’t stay still, forcing him to pace the room for a few seconds as he tries to sort out the scrambling mess of thoughts currently filling up his head. After a few seconds he pauses though, and runs his fingers roughly through his hair, tugging away at tangles, before he turns and strides out of the room.

He doesn’t know what he’s planning to do, or even what he’s thinking. He just knows that Dave’s in the common room and he needs to be with him right now. For months he’s been waiting to hear those words from Dave, to get some sort of confirmation that he’s not the only one feeling like this, to have his feelings returned. In a perfect world, were he a little braver, he’d have been the one to admit his feelings to Dave. But this is just as good. If not better. But now all he can think of is the fact that he’s approaching Dave, that he’s got to find some way to tell him he feels the same without making a fool of himself, that he knows things won’t be the same after this, in some way or another.

His stream of thoughts is brought to a complete halt as he reaches the half open door to the common room. It’s dark within, lit by nothing but a tiny lamp in the corner of the room that someone alchemised and put there a few weeks ago, and there’s no sign of sound or movement from within. Karkat pauses, tipping his head towards the room to listen out for anything from within for a few seconds, but then gives up and takes a few steps inside. He steels himself with a deep breath, clenching his hands into fists and then flexing his fingers a few times, before he heads further inside.

At first glance the room looks empty, enough that normally he’d have just turned straight around and walked back out. But as his eyes adjust to the semi-darkness he spots a shape in one corner, light glinting back at him off of something in a way that he recognises as the way light reflects off of Dave’s shades. With a small huff, he realises the shape to be Dave huddled in the pile of bean bags they keep in the corner of the common room, and he quickly hurries over towards him. His footsteps echo too loudly on the hard flooring, and he knows Dave must hear and see him approaching, but he forces himself to keep going nervously. As Karkat gets close, Dave gets up to his own feet, but makes no attempt to move away, and just stands there awkwardly, fiddling with one sleeve of his shirt.

“Hey,” Karkat says as he reaches Dave.

“Hey,” Dave echoes, “Look I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all that stuff and it was stupid, and just pretend I didn’t say it and let’s just stay friends okay please and -”

Karkat silences Dave by grabbing hold of the collar of his shirt and pulling him closer to him. “You are such an idiot, you know that right?” Karkat says quietly. Then he pulls Dave closer forwards and catches Dave’s lips with his.

For a second Dave freezes, letting out a small muffled noise of surprise, but then he melts into Karkat’s arms and presses up closer to him, kissing him back slowly and cautiously. He feels Dave work a hand upwards into his hair, pulling his head down to pull the two of them impossibly closer. There’s a fluttering low in Karkat’s stomach, and a rush of emotion through his mind that he’s never felt before, a feeling he tries to express through every movement of his mouth against Dave’s. Already he can feel Dave’s shirt dampening under his hands, and hear their heavy breathing in the short spaces between kisses. It’s raw, unmasked, so unlike the way him and Dave have always skirted around their feelings and tiptoed around each other recently.

Dave pulls back too soon for Karkat’s liking, the space between suddenly feeling vaster than ever before, but his hand planted firmly on Karkat’s chest tells the troll to give him some time to think. There’s a long few moments of silence between them, filled only by the sound of short breathy gasps for air and the sound of Karkat’s own heart pounding in his head. Dave’s hand twists tightly into Karkat’s sweater, absentmindedly playing with the material as his thoughts spiral, and Karkat takes a half step forwards to make it more accessible for him, knowing by now after countless sleepless nights spent with Dave that the human finds comfort in small distractions like this.

“Karkat,” Dave says after a long time, and the raspiness of his voice makes Karkat shudder faintly. “Karkat I… are you just doing this to humour me because you feel sorry for me or…”

“No, no! Never!” Karkat assures him, “I’d never… fuck, okay, right. I am so fucking flushed for you, you absolute idiot. I have been for months, I was just never brave enough to say it. But you… you were. Of course you were. Because you - you’re brilliant and…”

He’s cut off by Dave letting out a light, airy laugh. A giggle. Something Karkat’s never heard from him before. His face melts into pure relief and delight, and his grip on Karkat’s sweater relaxes. Karkat lets out a laugh of his own, and for a second there’s nothing but laughter between the two of them, both of them far too relieved. Karkat knows Dave is letting out his emotions through the laughter just like he is, and the two of them cling onto each other for a second as their laughter dies away. And neither of them mention it when the two of them quickly wipe away tears that are certainly more than just laughter tears in the silence afterwards.

“So… are we doing this?” Dave asks after a few moments, “The whole… dating thing? Are we making this happen?”

Karkat stares at him for a second, struggling to keep a straight face, then another hysterical laugh bubbles up out of his chest, and he slaps a hand weakly against Dave’s chest. “Did you just quote your godawful fucking comic at me in the middle of a sentimental moment, you fucking asshole?” He laughs, “You are so stupid.”

“I’m sorry,” Dave says with a faint laugh, “Force of habit. But really… Are we… ya know?”

“We fucking better be making this happen,” Karkat says, the last of his laughter dying away again as he stretches up onto his toes a little to attempt to get up to eye level with Dave, swallowing thickly as he starts to take things more seriously again. “Seriously, Strider, I want you as my matesprit more than anything.”

“Really?” Dave murmurs, leaning in a little closer so his words send warm air fanning gently across Karkat’s skin. “Because… yeah, I really fucking want you to be my boyfriend.” He snakes an arm around Karkat’s waist, pressing a hand up against Karkat’s lower back to hold him up on his toes as the two lean closer again. Karkat can just about see Dave’s eyes through his shades, hidden by their tinted glass, and he wishes they weren’t there, that that one tiny barrier between him and Dave wasn’t there. But he knows Dave still needs his boundaries, for now at least, and he respects that.

“So you got over the whole no homo thing?” Karkat checks, because he’s not ready yet for another human sexuality excuse from Dave the next time he freaks out about it all. It’s happened too many times before, even when they’ve just been hanging out as friends.

“Yeah, I got that all sorted,” Dave says, “With quite a lot of help from Rose. I realised it doesn’t really matter anymore. Earth’s gone and… all I care about is you.”

Karkat lets out a little trilling noise from the back of his throat, unable to control the instinctive reaction to his happiness. For so long he’s waited for Dave to say those words, dreamed of those words as he’s laid awake at night unable to sleep. Dave’s face softens faintly at the sound Karkat makes, and he drops his forehead forwards against Karkat’s with a soft huff of fond laughter. For a moment they breathe in harmony, and then Karkat tilts his head upwards to clumsily graze his lips against Dave’s, still unable to feel that he can do that without it feeling wrong or forbidden. But he can now. Whatever boundaries him and Dave had put up between them have been pulled crashing down.

Dave presses further into this kiss, turning what Karkat had meant to be a chaste peck into a deeper, more passionate kiss, his hands fleetingly dipping up under the material of Karkat’s sweater and breezing over his warm skin before dropping back down to his hips again. Still, his movements are cautious, and something about that makes Karkat feel an even stronger rush of love towards him. But Dave’s own movements have made him more confident, and he cautiously pushes his hands up under the back of Dave’s shirt. His skin is warm and solid, so real. So unlike anything Karkat’s felt for a long time.

Then there’s a clattering above them, and Karkat feels Dave freeze at the exact same time as he does.

“The vents,” Karkat breathes, moving his head back just a few inches from Dave, “Gamzee.”

“Yeah, we should… go… my room,” Dave says almost desperately, hands still tight on Karkat’s hips, “Now.”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Karkat says.

He turns out of Dave’s grip, already missing the warmth and closeness, and heads for the corridors. Dave follows closely, their hands brushing in the tiny space between them as they walk, and Karkat can’t help reaching out and grabbing onto his hand, just for that slight reassurance of contact. Dave links his fingers with Karkat’s, squeezing his hand gently, and the two carry on in silence as they make their way towards Dave’s room. It’s not far, a minute or less to walk there, and with their fast pace they’re there pretty soon.

Dave doesn’t bother to turn the lights on, just locks the door behind them and stumbles with Karkat over towards the bed to one side of the room. Within moments Dave has Karkat pushed up against the stack of pillows at one end of the bed, and is straddling his hips, leaning down to kiss Karkat despite the weird angle it puts his neck at. Karkat relaxes backwards, easily falling into the motion as Dave tilts his head to slide his lips better against Karkat’s.

Karkat’s whole life so far has been anger, failure, and fear. Years spent hiding from culling drones, dealing with the antics and relationships of his friends, and trying his best to focus on everyone else instead of himself, all seem to have led up to this moment, here, in the dark, on what used to once be such a lonely meteor. Now the pain he has suffered seems, for a while at least, distant and unimportant. Alternia feels a million sweeps away and more, and his old life dead and gone. Now there’s no fear, no heartache, no sickening knowledge of a lonely, miserable future pressing at the back of his thoughts. Now there’s just soft hands on his skin, soft words whispered in his ears, and soft lips moving with fervor against his.

Love. It’s something he never thought he’d get, something he never thought he deserved. Relationships were a necessity back on Alternia, something picked up as a way to fit to society’s standards and survive the drones. Sure, there was the love he saw portrayed in romcoms, pure and beautiful, something some trolls would accomplish one day if they got the chance, and there was Nepeta’s excessive and yet almost admirable belief in the power of love between her friends. But for Karkat… that was never an option. Imagining a life beyond the cold corner he cowered in at the sound of approaching drones was pointless, hoping for a future when a future was something he was never guaranteed was nothing more than wishful thinking. If he were to go back and tell past Karkat that all of this was waiting for him, his younger self would probably beat him to a pulp with a pair of sickles and then spit on his corpse.

But there’s no time for dwelling on the past. Not when the present is what it is right now. And the present is Dave gently trailing a path of kisses down from Karkat’s jaw to his collarbone. He’d never have thought Dave to be such an affectionate person, but he understands the need to let out many months of repressed emotions out in some form or other. So as Dave’s movements slow, and he raises his head slightly, Karkat reaches out to slide his shades off of his face, and then leans in to a slow, lingering kiss.

“Karks,” Dave gasps faintly as Karkat pulls away, “This is my first… anything, with anyone. Can we just… you know, take it slow?”

Dave’s eyes track Karkat’s face carefully, the red irises he’s so ashamed of almost entirely concealed by how wide his pupils are stretched. He seems worried. As if asking Karkat to go slow is going to force some wedge between them. As if Karkat too isn’t thinking the very same thing.

“Of course,” Karkat murmurs, “How about we just stay here for a while?”

Dave smiles, and then slowly rolls sideways to lay beside Karkat on his back, staring upwards at the ceiling as his breathing rate starts to calm down. “Yeah, that sounds good,” he says, knocking his knee gently against Karkat’s. On the bed between them, Dave shifts his hand to curl it around Karkat’s linking their fingers, and then lets his eyes flutter closed with a happy sigh.

“Never thought today would go like this,” Dave says with a soft chuckle.

“Yeah, no, me neither,” Karkat says. He takes the opportunity to glance over at Dave, laying with his head tilted back and his eyes closed, a look of utter bliss falling over his face. Karkat’s not sure he’s ever seen Dave so willingly show so much emotion freely on his face. The sight just makes him fall in love even more again and again.

“I’m glad,” Karkat says after a moment, “That today went like this, I mean.”

Dave turns his head, and opens one eye, eyebrow raised slightly. “Oh yeah?” He asks, voice a little husky.

Karkat grins to himself. “Yeah, definitely.”

Maybe he should send a message off to a past Karkat. Tell that little guy that everything will be okay in the end.

**Author's Note:**

> we're one week into social isolation over here and i'm already consumed by boredom, so there are a LOT of homestuck fics on the way, so keep a look out for them if you want more davekat/other hs stuff!


End file.
